Two Brothers
(On sale for another 4 days over at the dev website:
http://ackkstudios.wordpress.com/)
I'll divide these impressions in 2 parts, because it will make it easier to make these two contrasting points very clear.
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Lets start with the good:
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Despite the low res nature (you can drag the window borders to make it bigger), the game looks great and sometimes rather outstanding. The game can be really pretty, like the panda inn in the above picture or the play it does with colours. Speaking of which, the "story hook" in the game is the quest of the main character to find... color in the world. It sounds a bit...weird at first, but its actually really refreshing to see a game that builds a story, progress and mystique around such a seemingly simple concept, instead of the usual save-the-world fare. They did a really good job at mystifying that concept and manage to actually create interest and curiosity in the player and actually pulled it off instead of making it feel like a tacked on gimmick (I am thinking of a certain Steam RPG here that had a similar idea with videogame styles but ended up being all gimmick, no substance).
The game is also endearingly wacky and charming. There are quite a few concepts that managed to surprise me, starting with some quests, the inventory system, small details like the main character "throwing" arrows instead of using a bow (a "skill" he starts with), bosses you need to enter to defeat them, random unexplainable characters that ambush you on the world map to... talk with you or the fact that you constantly die but death isnt ready for you yet, which is also an area that serves as hub and game map. The game is a collection of charmingly weird things, which I really, really like. The inventory system especially deserves another mention, but lets just say... I dont want to spoil it for you because its really cool to... explore it yourself (after you got it).
The game also seems to offer a good variety in the map design, meaning towns, open areas or dungeons offering different experiences. It also doesnt seem to be too easy since some of the fighting rooms or puzzles can be rather challenging.
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Lets continue with the bad:
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Smaller stuff:
The game isnt actually open world, which is a bit disappointing. Its not a big issue, but the game seems more focussed around areas that you are visiting in a rather strict order. You can then later backtrack to these areas to get some additional items you might have missed, but calling that "Open world" is a bit farfetched. The combat "works" but isnt exactly overly competent either. You have light/strong/combo attacks can find/buy a variety of different weapons, but sometimes it doesnt "perfectly" work if the game doesnt seem to give you fair means of defeating a certain enemy or if its a bit wonky and you'll just end up running away in these encounters (which is a perfectly valid solution). Its not a big issue to me, but you shouldnt expect a big combat focus or play these games mostly for the combat.
On to the big stuff, I'll just c/p the mail I sent to the dev on that matter:
I played the most recent version and after playing for ~2 hours, I needed to restart the game about 4-5 times just so it got reset and continued working after being stuck. One example was the first time entering the house of Bivare, and then after the first sentence the game froze. The auto save alleviates that a bit because you can restart and pick up where you left off immediately, but its still rather unpleasant.
Even more problematic however are clear gamebreaking bugs that put my position randomly on the screen. I had the pleasure of exploring a lot of "Black" off screen space, for example:
1. Directly after the intro (I had the game tabbed and running because I already saw the intro)
2. After leaving the first village with the panda inn, you will go enter a passageway north of that on the world map. Shortly before finishing that part and entering the world map again, the game froze and upon reloading it set my position north of the exit zone where I found two more chests and a few enemies in black space.
There was another one, but I forgot where. The issue is that the game autosaves this crazy position which makes it almost impossible to reenter the normal map. I could only fix these by editing the character position in the save file to a safe location to continue playing. There was also the case of Mark leaving my party and after entering the bay area (where you find the axe), he would randomly climb up a ladder and be with me again. I assume thats not how it is supposed to be, especially because he was gone again after reloading that save and then not appearing anymore. And I just remembered a bug in the first "big" dungeon (where you get the moving cog): There are these rooms with these big buttons that you need to press that will activate/deactive pillars on the floor. You can step on a button and at the same time still partly stand on the pillar that is rising from the ground, which will make the char stuck.
On top of that, there are some other small annoyances, for example that the game doesnt save my resolution/gamepad options which means I need to constantly input these again after each freeze/restart. I would estimate that I was restarting the game about 8-9 times in 2 hours, including editing the save file 3 times to get back to the normal area, so setting my options again every time doesnt sit well with me either.
I really hope you can sort these out eventually, but it seems to me you need some serious bug testing still.
The dev is apparently currently still fixing issues, but from what I can see the preorder ends in 4 days, which coincides with the full release of the game if I understand that correclty and I dont think they will have everything fixed by then.
Despite that.. the biggest compliment I can make the game right now is that I consider the game interesting enough to make me want to play it even WITH these issues. The above mentioned bugs/glitches I could usually solve within 10-15 seconds, despite them being annoying, so I got around to dealing with it. However, this WILL be a deal breaker to many and I probably wouldnt have bought the game at 10$ (even considering its 5$ off) if I had known that before. I have certain... issues... recommending the game as it is now for 10$, especially considering most other games in these threads are way, way more polished, but IF you have 10$ lying around and know about these issues (and how to deal with them), then you might as well throw it at this game which definitely is a labor of love, even though it is hard and very rough love.